While Anakin repaired his podracer, Shmi told Jinn about her son's miraculous birth. Later, Jinn tested Anakin and discovered that he was Force-sensitive. Due to his high concentration of Midi-chlorians, Jinn believed that Anakin was the prophesied Chosen One. The following day, Qui-Gon offered to sponsor Anakin for the upcoming Boonta Eve race in return for securing Shmi and her son's emancipation if Anakin won that race. However, Watto was unwilling to relinquish both slaves at the same time. Instead, they reached a compromise where Watto would agree to free Anakin if he won the race. The following day, Shmi along with the offworld visitors attended the Boonta Eve Classic. Despite great odds, her son Anakin won the race, and Watto was forced to honor his promise to emancipate Anakin.[5]

Following the race, Shmi and her son embraced each other with Shmi expressing pride in her son's achievements. After securing Anakin's earnings from Watto, Jinn informed Shmi that he had secured Anakin's emancipation and offered to train him as a Jedi. With much difficulty, Shmi decided to part with her son. Realizing that Anakin would have a better future offworld, Shmi advised her son to grasp this new opportunity and told him to let her go on the rationale that her place and future was on Tatooine. Prior to leaving for his new life on Coruscant, Anakin made a solemn vow that he would return and free her.[5]

A few years before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Shmi met a moisture farmer named Cliegg Lars, who bought her from Watto and emancipated her. The two subsequently fell in love, married, and lived together at the Lars moisture farm in Tatooine's Jundland Wastes. One month before the Battle of Geonosis, Shmi was out gathering mushrooms in the morning when a group of Tusken Raiders kidnapped her. Cliegg assembled a rescue party but lost most of his companions and his right leg during the rescue attempt. Believing Shmi to be dead and unwilling to risk any more lives, Lars abandoned the rescue.[4]

However, Shmi was still alive but had been severely tortured and brutalized. Meanwhile, her son Anakin, who had become a Jedi Padawan under Obi-Wan Kenobi, sensed her distress through the Force. Anakin immediately set off to Tatooine to find and save her; he convinced his love interest, Senator Amidala, to accompany him. After meeting with Watto, Anakin and Amidala arrived at the Lars familyfarm and learned about his mother's fate after Anakin left for Coruscant: freedom, marrying Cliegg and becoming stepmother to Owen Lars, and her kidnapping. Despite Cliegg' warnings and advice, Anakin traveled into the wilderness to find her. He eventually stumbled on a Tusken Raider camp.[4]

Shmi dies in the arms of her son

After infiltrating the camp, he found the tent where Shmi was being held. There, Anakin encountered a bound and emaciated Shmi, who was near death. Prior to her death, she managed to tell her son that she was proud of him and that she loved him. Shmi's death threw Anakin into a fit of rage, and he took his first step to the dark side of the Force. In his rage, Anakin avenged his mother by coldly killing every Tusken Raider in the encampment, including the women and children. The following morning, Anakin returned to the Lars moisture farm with his mother's body. Shmi was mourned by both her son Anakin and Cliegg, as well as Amidala, Owen, and his girlfriend, Beru, who all attended her funeral.[4] Beru served blue milk (and cheese) to everyone after[7]

Shmi's death had a profound effect on influencing her son Anakin's journey to the dark side. Prior to his mother's burial, Anakin told Amidala that he regretted not being strong enough to save his mother. He also vowed that he would one day become so powerful that he could learn to stop people from dying. Finally, Skywalker confessed to his role in murdering the Tusken Raiders to avenge his mother's death.[4] Skywalker's guilt about not being able to prevent Shmi's death made him susceptible to Darth Sidious' efforts to win him over to the dark side.[8]

During the Clone Wars, Anakin experienced a Force vision of Shmi on the planet Mortis, where he had been put through a series of tests by three powerful beings known as the Force wielders who wanted to determine whether he truly was the Chosen One. In reality, the Son, one of the Force wielders who embodied the dark side of the Force, had assumed the form of his late mother. The false Shmi told Anakin to give up his love for Amidala, whom he had secretly married shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, saying that he did not truly love her and that she was poison to him before transforming into the Son.[9]

Years later Kenobi left toys for Luke next to Shmi’s sandblasted tombstone for Beru to find.[10]

Another time Obi-Wan had gone to Shmi Skywalker’s grave to apologize for losing her son.[11]